Countdowns All Around
Posted by drew
It's Thursday, and I've got three major, looming deadlines staring me in the face. I think I've got a handle on all of them, but it's definitely not a relaxing time in my life right now.
<Geek>
On the work front, I've migrated two very large web properties into the Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud over the past eight months or so. I've been learning the ins and outs of the new technology as I go, and the playing field really has changed. There have been a tonne of little headaches and bugs and glitches, and I've been pulled out of bed at 5am more often than I care to admit. And now - just when we're finally stable - a directive has come down from the Evil Masters to port both sites to a common backend using the latest new Drupal code. On one hand this will open a lot of doors for us, allowing us to scale a lot quicker and use some of the more modern tools, like storing all images on a Content Data Network (CDN) instead of on our current frontend webservers. Still, the deadline for launch is February 12th and that's coming up faaaaaaaaast. I've barely got the preliminary test servers in place!
</Geek>
On the boat front the engine work continues, though the work seems to multiply every time I put time into it. I'm finding a great deal of satisfaction in it, actually - I mentioned to a friend yesterday that it is very much like 'The Legend of Zelda', in that the puzzles are difficult, but once solved there is immediate positive feedback (ie the engine works better) and you can move on to the next puzzle, often using knowledge or tools you gained from the previous level.
Yesterday's miniboss was changing the zincs in the engine. Sacrificial zincs are bits of... well, zinc. The theory is that if you bind several types of metals together in a marine environment, the weakest metal will corrode. Because of some kind of galvanic voodoo, the other metals will not corrode until the weaker metal is completely corroded away. Zinc is a very weak metal, easy to work with and cheap, and so quite a few different parts of the boat have sacrificial lumps of zinc attached to prevent the more important bits from corroding.
The zincs in the engine should be replaced about once a year, more or less depending on use. My engine has three zincs - at $7.00 per zinc, it's a $21.00 job to replace them all, but compared with approximately $10,000 for a new engine, the price is negligible. The zincs are attached to the end of thick bolts and screwed deep into the heart of the engine.
One of the three zincs is located right on the front of the engine, easily accessed. The other two zincs are located far down the right side, between the engine block and the wall. Once I stepped back and surveyed the engine, I found that I could just barely get a socket wrench in a gap, which allowed me to remove zinc #2 with little difficulty - but zinc #3 was a real hassle. To get at the third zinc I had to remove the fuel lift pump (skills and items gained from previous level!) and the exhaust manifold - and even then the bolt holding the zinc into the engine was seized pretty solidly. I ended up having to extend the socket handle and actually step on it to get the bolt free; never send a hand to do a boot's job. I swear I heard victory music when that bolt finally gave way.
So far in the past month I have rerouted the fuel lines, replaced the fuel filter, installed and plumbed a second fuel filter, replaced the damaged exhaust water trap ($300, ouch), replaced the impeller in the raw water pump, and replaced the zincs. Remaining, I have to have the alternator tested and serviced, pick up new oil, drain and change the current oil, drain and change the transmission oil, take the heat exchangers to the radiator shop to have them boiled out, pick up antifreeze, install the secondary cooling pump, drain the engine cooling system and replace with antifreeze, reroute the raw water intake through the heat exchangers, rewire the instrument panel, and then get the fuel tank polished. Whew! Someday soon, I will have an engine that runs reliably; ideally one that I do not have to climb into the engine compartment with a screwdriver to start. There's almost no chance I'll have all this done by Monday, so I really have to pick and choose what tasks are actually important.
...and then I get to start on the electrical system! For some reason, since returning from Vegas the house batteries aren't holding a charge anymore. I have no idea why; I need to replace the batteries and purchase and install a modern charge manager. I don't expect to get that one sorted out for under $1000.
Lastly, I have Sequential Circus coming up on Saturday. This is a huge show, with six live-pa acts performing 45-minute sets at a local show venue slash warehouse space. Everything is coming together smoothly, mostly because it's our sixth time running this show and we're all getting really good at it. It's really starting to look like we're going to have a solid crowd too, which takes a lot of the financial stress off of my back - if everything works out well, I might just come out of it a hundred bucks richer!
I still haven't figured out where to go on Monday, and the False Creek / Olympic Village security lockdown continues... more on that soon.
What’s Up
Posted by drew
I realize it's been quite a while since the last time I posted, so here's a quick update on what's going on.
First, I haven't figured out where to move to yet. I have a few options, with plusses and minuses to each. Deep Cove has friends nearby, but I haven't heard much about the spaces available, if any, and the only places I've seen with boats anchored are quite a ways away from any amenities like laundry, groceries, etc. Port Moody seems to have a few boats anchored, but no real docks or transit or... well, anything nearby. Bowen Island is an option, but it requires pulling the boat up onto the beach if I want to go ashore. Both places might require a lengthy row - ie a couple of kilometers.
Victoria still beckons, and frankly the idea of heading over there sounds like my best plan. I figure I could take a week or so to get there, bounce down the coast, hit up a few of the little coves and bays along the way. Once my engine repairs are complete - and they're getting closer by the day - I can stock up on supplies and head out for literally weeks at a time, as long as I have fuel, water and cellphone access.
The past couple of weeks have been filled with emotional turmoil mostly unrelated to boating and adventure. I'll try to write about that soon, but I need some time to process it all first. Emotions are funny things.
It Starts…
Posted by drew
(alternate title: "Served! Served! Served!")
Ok, so I figured I'd write this "tomorrow", but that "tomorrow" was Christmas Eve and well... you know how it goes.
official notice from the VPD
So! December 23rd, I got a visit from the Vancouver Police Department, in the R.G.McBeath. They were quite friendly, as they often are, but they explained that unfortunately the court battle between the city and a False Creek liveaboard had come to a close, with the judge ruling to uphold the 2006 Vancouver addendum to the Canada Shipping Act. The Act, translated to layman english, says that no person or group can "own" a navigable water - ie anywhere that the tide goes in and out. Navigable water is public land, and anyone can anchor in any navigable water for as long as they like as long as they're not blocking shipping channels or in military areas.
...or as the Addendum states, "or if it's False Creek, Vancouver, in which case all bets are off.".
Anyhow, the officers told me that they were now under orders to enforce the anchoring bylaws, and that I would have to get an anchoring permit if I wanted to stay in False Creek. They gave me an informational pamphlet detailing what to expect in the Creek during the Olympics, and they served me with an official notice saying that I must have said permit by January 4th, or that I'll be towed from the creek at my expense. That's not an insignificant expense, either - the towing includes a haulout, which requires a special mobile crane lift to pull the boat out of the water and up onto land storage. Usually a haulout costs around $200 per trip, and the officers made sure to point out there would be added storage fees racking up daily while the boat rests on their land.
Just as an aside, I wouldn't be surprised if the VPD marine dry storage place didn't actually have the capability to lift a boat of Tie Fighter's size out of the water - she's about 7.5m wide, and most travel lifts can only handle a boat about 5m wide... not that I have any inclination towards putting that theory to the test!
the outside of the VPD's pamphlet
There are folks around in the Creek who have their hackles raised by the ruling. Honestly, I must confess there's even a little anti-authoritarian anarchist part of me left over from my teens - that part of my mind has built a mental barricade from a burning, flipped over Prius, and is screaming "WE WILL FIGHT THIS!" - but the reality is, I have no intention whatsoever of fighting it. I'll go. Frankly, I kind of needed the kick in the ass; if you're going to live in an apartment that can travel around but you don't actually take advantage of that fact... well, you might as well be living in a trailer park.
If you're reading this and you're not from Vancouver, you might not realize that False Creek is pretty much ground zero for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. I am currently anchored just west of the Cambie Bridge, about 300m from the Olympic Village, future home to the illustrious athletes while the games are ongoing, and future snooty yuppy condo village for decades after that. It has actually been a real pleasure to watch the Village rise from the unused industrial plots over the past few months, and the bike ride around the seawall from the Cambie Bridge down towards Science World has become a tour of some the most beautiful architecture in the city. I will deeply miss calling this neighborhood my "permanent" home.
pamphlet, inside
Of course, with the Olympics being a huge political and financial debacle, forethought is critical. I can certainly understand the need to crack down on anchoring given the situation; hotel rooms are pushing up to $5000/night during the games! Anyone within boating range would/should/will jump at the chance to come and spend a few days staying on their boat free of charge, anchored pretty much directly in the downtown core of Vancouver. There's a serious potential there for chaos, with hundreds or perhaps even thousands of boaters of various skill levels attempting to anchor in the notoriously foul weather of February. A single dragging anchor can mean many thousands of dollars of damage to a boat... or more importantly, to other boats or property nearby. The city would be crazy to stand by and let it happen, which is why I've been saying for months that there'd be absolutely no way they'd allow us to stay on, unfettered, through the Olympic games.
So what does it all mean for me? Well, when I first heard the news I took it as bad. After reflection, I have now I have come to realize that it's just the change of a chapter for this lifestyle; sometimes you get to pick when the next chapter begins, and sometimes you just have to roll with it. I've grown very complacent in the past few months, settling in to the easy life here in downtown Vancouver. There are groceries, laundry and many coffeeshops and restaurants within an easy walk. If I want to go to Canadian Tire, it's a hundred-meter row followed by a three-block bikeride - anchoring anywhere else that could be a two-kilometer row followed by a five-kilometer bikeride, or even much further. I'm already in decent shape, but I suspect that I will be in much better shape by summertime.
When I get my anchoring permit on January 4th, it will be valid for twenty-one days, meaning I will have to vacate False Creek on or before January 25th, 2010. Normally I wouldn't wait until the last minute, but I have obligations here in town on the 23rd, and I am hoping to travel a bit earlier on in the month.
To be clear, this isn't the end of an era - the permit only really says that I have twenty-one days in which I can stay in False Creek out of any sequential forty days. I can return to anchor False Creek in March, ideally just after the Olympics finish, but at that time the forces-that-be will have switched over to the summer permit rules. In the summertime one can anchor in False Creek for fourteen days out of any consecutive thirty days with a valid permit. Anchoring permits are free; the only thing that really changes here is my stable, unmoving spot, where I have been squatting at anchor without a permit for the past five months or so.
So now, on top of my usual pile of duties, obligations and stresses, I have a half of a month to finish all of my maintenance tasks, tie off any loose ends in town and find a new place to live for a month or so, and my ability to stay in one place for months at a time has been more or less permanently removed. As of January 25th, I will officially be a nomad!
More Photos from Theresa
Posted by drew
Three blog posts in one day?!
Well it technically should be four, since I still have some big and potentially unpleasant news to share - but I really needed to get the other stories posted and out of the way first, so I'll save the big news for its own blog post. Since that post will require some time to do right, and since these photos are still fresh on my desktop, I'll just post them here with minimal fanfare. I'll hopefully get around to the other update tomorrow.
Thanks for these lovely photos, Theresa!
Tie Fighter in False Creek in the night
a view of Yaletown from the water, on a cold December day
sunset on False Creek in December, from And-E
Christmas in False Creek
Christmas in the Creek, part 2
Yet Again With The Anchor Dragging
Posted by drew
shove off, you!
Sunday morning I was comfortably sleeping off the effects of Saturday night's party in Gastown when I was rudely awakened by a phonecall from Brad, another one of the False Creek liveaboards.
"Hey, uh, that cabin cruiser dragged his anchor again, he's banging into your bows, you should probably get down here..."
I hurried back to the boat to find that the same old cabin cruiser had one again dragged his anchor and was indeed bumping into my bows, scuffing them up and causing a few little dings to the fiberglass. I stepped aboard and let out another twenty feet or so of his anchor line, and then with Brad's help I pushed him off of me and brought him up alongside Tie Fighter. I deployed a few fenders and then lashed the boat to mine, so that he wouldn't keep slamming into me, or drag further and hit Brad's boat or fetch up on the rocks.
fenders deployed, bring her up alongside
The last time this happened, I asked the powerboat's owner, Brendon, to put a bit of paper with his emergency contact info into the window of his boat, which he agreed to but unfortunately didn't manage to actually do. He spontaneously showed up about twenty minutes later - apparently he has a friend with a condo overlooking False Creek, and that friend watches his boat for him and calls him whenever he drags his anchor. He apologized yet again; admittedly his apologies are starting to wear a little thin. Last time there was minimal damage, but this time there were numerous scuffs and scratches on my bows from his boat. Each time I've helped him out he's promised to come back with beer as a thank-you and/or apology, but I have yet to see that. If it happens again, especially with similar scratches and scuffs, I'm going to insist that he chips in a bit on the paint fund for the haul-out and repaint this coming spring. At least this time I managed to get his cellphone number - he promised once again to post it on his boat.
are those overalls?
It's confusing how someone with a large 'bruce' anchor can drag so often, but then again, this is False Creek. When he pulled up his anchor, there was something attached to it; to my eyes it appeared to be a full set of men's overalls!
I re-battened the hatches and prepared to leave - at this point my neighbor Theresa rowed over from her sailboat 'And-E' to let me know that she'd gotten a few photos of the incident and offered me her camera's SD card to transfer the pics. I didn't have my laptop handy, so I asked her to email the photos; the email arrived yesterday, and I'm just now getting around to posting them, in an attempt to catch up on even more news on the blog. Once I was sure everything with Tie Fighter was solid, I returned to the house party, still under way with breakfast now prepared and waiting for me.
the cruiser lashed to And-E, Tie Fighter in the background
The next day, I got a text message from Theresa asking for Brendon's cellphone number - apparently he had dragged his anchor yet again in the night! When she had woken up at 3am, she looked out her window but could only see white, and wondered what was going on - she eventually figured out that it was the cabin cruiser, resting gently against the side of her sailboat, so she lashed him in place, and, noting that he still hadn't posted his cellphone number, went back to bed for the night.
Honestly, when it comes to False Creek I'm all for freedom and equality, but it's just this sort of thing that gives the live-aboards a bad name. The reason the laws were put in place in 2006 to prevent long-term anchoring in False Creek was to prevent people from essentially abandoning their derelict vessels, becoming both eyesores and liabilities to anyone anchoring - or for that matter, occupying paid legal moorage - in the neighborhood. There's another sailboat just down the Creek from me with no mast or engine, anchored in place with yellow nylon rope, slowly rotting away; when I saw the owner paddling his inflatable kayak out to it one day, I asked him what the deal was, and he explained that he lives in Hope. In HOPE! That's about a two-hour drive away from False Creek. His boat has hundreds of hours of work needed before it can be considered seaworthy, and I've seen him on it no more than three times in the past six months.
Oh well. All this will be changing very soon; more on that shortly.
Art
Posted by drew
One of the (many) differences between living in a regular apartment or house vs. living on a sailboat is the general lack of vertical wallspace on which to put up artwork. I had pretty much resigned myself to a spartan decorating scheme, and I had placed all of my treasured artworks into storage for some future date when I have wallspace again - but about a month ago I had an epiphany.
Actually it wasn't an epiphany at all, because the idea wasn't my own. I'm not sure of the exact words then, perhaps I could say "I was enlightened"? The story is simple; it happened while I was walking home from an art opening called "Robots and Monsters" at the Ayden Gallery, which I had just been to with Trent and Shauna. I had become somewhat smitten with a gorgeous painting by Peter Hogan, entitled "Bizbot 2" - click the link to see the unfinished version; the final version had a lot more polish, very much a victorian portrait of the subject, complete with a perfectly-suited gilted frame.
Anyhow - walking away from the gallery, I was loudly lamenting the fact that I had to leave such a ridiculously awesome piece unpurchased. The artist was asking $300, which, while out of my pricerange, would technically have been possible if I tightened up my belt for a month or two - the problem was that on the boat I literally have nowhere to hang it. So what could I do? Lend it to someone and hope they don't fall completely in love with it? Wrap it up and place it in a storage locker for a few years? Nothing seemed appropriate.
At this point, Trent made that face he makes when he's about to state some conclusion that he feels you really should have arrived at on your own, and said:
"You live in the same city as the artist, and you own your boat. Why don't you just commission them to do a piece on a bulkhead or something, to paint a part of the boat?"
At this point I think I actually stopped in my tracks with my mouth open. Of COURSE!
"The Stowaway" - gorgeous!
So. Long story short, last Tuesday the lovely and talented Shauna Eve came by to paint the first of what will hopefully be many original and lovely art pieces painted on the internal hull and bulkheads of Tie Fighter. This piece, entitled "The Stowaway", graces the starboard side of the bathroom/dressing room in the forward cabin. Lovely!
It's been incredible to me just how many talented musicians I've had spend time on the boat over the summer, and I certainly look forward to more jams and mini-concerts in the months to come. The water is an excellent stage for performance - I don't know why it never occurred to me to extend the boat itself as a canvas for some of the exceptionally talented visual artists in my life as well. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to give you that little push to make you realize the full potential, even when you stare at it every day.
So who will be next? I don't want to force the issue; I figure the right artists will become apparent when the time is right. For now, I can't help but grin every time I see the Stowaway.
Welcome to Disengage.ca
Recent Posts
- What a Week!
- Long Night
- Incoming Windstorm!
- Windstorm Aftermath
- Windstorm!
- Knives
- Back from Hiatus
- A Quick One
- Stress
- The Bits In Question
- Well, That Could Have Gone Better.
- Lockdown!
- Countdowns All Around
- What’s Up
- It Starts…
Twitter Feed
- mux: ps: all this work is great for my summer body! you're all festivals and beaches, I'm all 'wax on, wax off' and drinking milk. wait and see. July 27, 2010
- mux: officially too dark to sand the boat anymore; time for a shower, then sleep. tomorrow, same thing over again. groundhog day got nothin'. July 27, 2010
- mux: dear future Drew: sorry about the solvent fumes. July 27, 2010
Blogs I Like
- Adventures of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
- Going Nomadic
- JC McDowell and the Family Unit
- Loose Moorings
- Sail To Trail
- Tired of I.T.!